OUT TO LUNCH BREAK: It’s a gorgeous, temperate Thursday in Worcester, and there’s a crowd on the Worcester Common listening to the reggae-soul stylings of the Alchemystics at the final Out to Lunch Festival and Farmers’ Market series of the year. This one had been postponed, in fact, because of a heatwave, but it’s so beautiful outside that it feels like this is how it was meant to be in the first place. Certainly, it’s an appreciated moment of joy in what has been kind of a rough week, particularly after a contentious primary election that pitted normal political allies against one another. That’s still the topic of conversation all over town, of course, but here it seems like a distant memory. I grab a BBQ Sundae from the Big T’s Jerky House food truck, and settle in at a table to listen to music and, when the band takes an intermission, watch breakdancing from the Orphanage Movement dance crew. For just a moment, the sun is shining and all the headaches of local and national politics seem a little distant.
TRASH TALK, REVISITED: As always, there were a lot of tables manned by local businesses, artists and nonprofits on the Common for the festival. Perhaps oddly, Casella Waste Systems had a table, where they were demonstrating their new recycling bins. It didn’t seem like many were visiting the table, but it put me in mind of something that had happened earlier in the week, when I noticed my neighbor had put out a plastic bag full of cans. Now, an Aug. 24 memo from The Department of Public Works & Parks and the Acting City Manager’s office had indicated that recycling put out like that wouldn’t be picked up. My first instinct was to let my neighbor know, but then I decided to just watch and see what happened. I was curious to see if they would leave it behind. When Wednesday morning rolled around, I peeked out my window and saw that the bag had been taken. “So much for that,” I said to myself, before I realized that while THAT bag was missing, no other trash had yet been picked up. It soon dawned on me that the bag had instead been taken by the people who scavenge through recycling bins in the wee hours, before trash pickup, taking cans to redeem for cash. I knew they did this, of course. I just never cared. After all, it was stuff I was throwing out anyway. As long as they didn’t make a mess, I was OK. Still, it left my experiment inconclusive. Or did it? Perhaps it was just a reminder that there’s only so much City Hall – or anyone, really – can control anything.
KEEP THE PARTY GOING: Much will be written about this year’s Democratic Party primary for the 1st Worcester Senate Race, and it’ll be interesting to see how that all shakes out as we head into the Nov. 8 general election. But the final installment of Out to Lunch seemed blessedly free of politics. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of politicos glad-handing. Which might be all for the best. We could all use a break, and this is festival season: The Pride Worcester Festival will take over the Common on Sept. 10; the Beats & Barbecue hip-hop festival will be on The Common Sept. 17; and stART on the Street will return to Park Avenue on Sept. 18. That’s just a smattering of what’s on the horizon, and as I’ve written before, festival season is Worcester at its best, when we can put everything aside for a moment and share in each other’s cultures and artistic creations. The pandemic robbed that from us for a couple of years. Best to seize joy while we can.
